The invention relates to a detachable connector for coupling the ends of optical fibers.
Connectors of the kind which can be quickly detached are used in optical communication systems in which data is transmitted, via optical fibers, from one location to another in the form of light pulses. For data transmission, the attenuation of the signal to be transmitted, in this case light pulses, should be minimized.
One of the causes of signal attenuation occurring in an optical communication system is formed by the connectors required for coupling the optical fibers used. Therefore, any signal attenuation caused by the connectors should be minimized.
Because the optical fibers to be coupled have effective diameters of 100 .mu.m and smaller (which are the diameters of the light conductive cores of the fibers), many components of the connectors to be used are made with a very high precision as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,902,784. This makes the connectors expensive and vulnerable, which is of course a disadvantage. On the other hand, the signal attenuation caused by said connectors can be small. However, for practical reasons optical communication systems require connectors which are easy to handle and which are not too expensive.